


Boy and the Beast

by knightinslightlyrustyarmour



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-02-26 09:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2646404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinslightlyrustyarmour/pseuds/knightinslightlyrustyarmour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven-year-old Remus Lupin only wants to make friends, go to school, be a normal boy. The problem being he transforms into a homicidal, demonic monster every month, which might be the cause of far more anxiety than any kid should have to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy and the Beast

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt at creating a detailed backstory for Lupin. So, drop a review or something if you enjoy. I'm a little out of practice at fanfiction.

Remus Lupin came to slowly, curled painfully on hardwood floor. He was sore all over his body and deep down in the centre of his brain. He was lying in a small pool of blood, and similar scarlet puddles dotted the floor elsewhere. Remus didn’t even need to look at himself to know that he was covered in gashes. He could feel the spots on his arm where his own claws had raked open the skin, where he had torn himself on the walls trying to escape. He did not remember sustaining these injuries in very much detail, only remembered the night as being spent curled in a dark, cramped, out-of-the-way corner of a savage beast’s mind, unable to seize control of his own limbs, unable to turn his own head.

Remus, attempting to calm his racing heart, squeezed his tiny hands into fists and instantly felt a sharp, stinging pain. Raising them to the level of his eyes, he saw that he had snapped three nails off last night, almost right down to the quick. He was familiar with this sensation, though not quite used to it. Looking around for the cause of his injuries, Remus saw that he had made a fresh set of gouges in the door in his desperate, feral attempt to escape.

_No!_ He mentally admonished himself. Not _his_ attempt to escape. The _wolf’s_ attempt to escape. He had to differentiate between the two forms of himself, or else, he reasoned, he would become the wolf and little Remus Lupin would be no more than a disturbed half-boy, living in fear of the next transformation. Luckily, the wolf’s escape attempt had been futile. Though that was hardly surprising. His mother and father secured the house with such strong barriers and protective enchantments that hardly anything, least of all a small child in the form of a wolf cub, could break free.

There came a tentative knock on the door and his mother, who always seemed to be attune to the end of his transformation, called out softly “Remmy, darling? Are you awake?” Remus attempted to groan out an affirmative response and shuffle into a sitting position. The scratched door creaked open slowly and Hope Lupin stepped into the room. Remus could see the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes as she saw her son, dirty, naked and bleeding on the floor. She sank down beside him and shrouded him in a fluffy dressing gown, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his nose.

“My darling Remmy!” she whispered fervently into his ear, squeezing him tight “I love you so much! So very, very much! Do you hear me, my darling? You’re safe! You’re home! You’re you again! I love you, I love you, I love you! You’re safe at home, right here with me!”

Remus could feel something hard and very compact blocking his throat and then tears welling in his eyes. He wanted to reach up and brush them away but he was folded much too tightly in his mother’s arms. So, he had to suffer them rolling uncontrollably down his cheeks. But Remus was not crying because of his mother’s teary sentiments, nor was it because of the shock of his recent transformation. He had become accustomed to both long ago.

“Mum,” he whispered finally, his voice thin and plaintive “I want to go to school.” His mother made a miserable noise, full of unspoken anguish.

“Oh, Remmy,” she sighed “You know that’s not possible.” She hugged him even tighter, and Remus had to fight to breathe.

“But I want friends! I don’t have any friends and I’m always so lonely! And it’s almost the beginning of the school year! All the other kids will be going back to school soon! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here with you and Dad!” There was a long pause, in which Hope’s mouth pursed tightly and her eyes dropped.

“When you’re older, maybe,” she whispered, her constant default answer when she didn’t want to talk any more about the subject of school. Remus knew it was a lie, but he didn’t reply, didn’t press her. She didn’t understand the loneliness, Remus sighed to himself. She didn’t know how much it hurt.

“Would you like dinner?” Hope asked abruptly, and Remus, despite his disappointment felt his mood pick up ever so slightly. He was starving. His transformation always left his stomach growling, begging for food. Meat especially. It was always meat he craved, for at least a week after.

“Yes please,” he smiled, feeling a stray tear drip from the upturned corner of his mouth.

“Well, I hope you’re hungry. I made a nice big piece of steak for you.” She took his hand and held him close by her side as they made their way to the kitchen.

“Raw?” Remus enquired softly.

“How else?” she replied, with a small, gentle laugh.

 

Dinner was a quiet affair. Remus’s father, Lyall Lupin, gave his son a quick hug and asked how he was feeling. Remus said he was fine. He always told his father that. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything else. Not with those words, even after all these years, still ringing in his mind. _Soulless… evil… deserving of nothing but death… nothing but death_. The fear of his father had passed, but the void between the two remained and Remus doubted anything could hope to fix that. Not after what his father had said.

Remus perched on the edge of his chair and devoured his steak with all the ferocity of the wolf he had just left behind. The moment he was done, he threw down his knife and fork.

“Can I go to bed now, Mum?” he asked. Hope regarded her son with grave eyes, but knowing how exhausted his transformations always left him, she have him her permission, but only after extracting at least another dozen hugs and kisses from him. Lyall attempted to atone for his lack of physical affection by nodding solemnly to his son, as if that were somehow supposed to soothe his mind.

Remus lay miserably in his own soft bed that night, his eyes darting every few seconds to his window, making sure and doubly sure it was locked tight. He had slept with the window latched shut ever since the attack, even in the heat of summer. He was scared, scared of the shadows that lurked outside his window. Any one of those shadows could be a monster. Remus had learned early on the falseness of his parents’ reassurances that the creaking floorboards and tapping on the glass at night were only his imagination, or else the wind. And he was even more scared knowing that he was one of those monsters. Sheets and walls and enchantments didn’t seem enough to protect him from the outside world, or the outside world from him. What if he killed someone? He curled up into a tight, warm ball and rolled away from the window, willing himself to sleep. But, as always happened when the memories of his latest transformation lingered fresh in his mind, dreams began to play in his head, unbidden.

 

It had been a night much like this one. Warm and summery and pleasant smelling. Hope had thrown open the windows to let the night air in and Remus was slumbering peacefully in his bed, having colourful and indistinct dreams that made him smile in his sleep. And then he had been torn from those dreams by rank breath in his face. His eyes had snapped open and a tiny squeak of fear escaped his mouth as he saw a man, dirty, dishevelled and foul, hovering above him, teeth bared. Remus wanted to scream, to scream for his mother and father to come and make the man go away, but his lips wouldn’t move and the sound caught halfway down his throat. All that emerged was a tiny and muffled whine.

“Let’s see how much your daddy loves his precious son now!” he’d snarled and ripped suddenly and ferociously into Remus’s neck. Remus found his voice at last and screamed, loud enough to wake the neighbourhood and most certainly his parents. The man’s teeth found his shoulder, his wrists, his arms. Remus screamed and screamed and screamed until his parents burst through the door, eyes wide, hair dishevelled. Lyall Lupin fumbled with his wand, directing it at the savage man, not daring to use the killing curse lest he miss and strike his son.

“Stupefy! Stupefy! Reducto! Impedimenta! Crucio! Crucio!” Thankfully, Remus was not caught by a jet of light, but Lyall’s aim was off by a long way. The man managed to dodge all the curses and leapt onto the windowsill. Just before he jumped out, he stared long and hard and Lyall, grinning wickedly.

“Looks like you were right about me,” he chuckled, before springing out into the night. Hope and Lyall were frozen for a moment, until Remus’s screams sent them running to his bedside. The sheets were drenched with scarlet and their son’s tiny frame was convulsing horribly.

“Hope, send for a Healer!” Lyall shouted, trying to seal up the bites with his wand. There had to have been something in that man’s teeth, however, for the wounds simply would not close over. Remus continued to scream, too lost in a world of pain to care about anything except getting it to stop, making it end. Why would the pain not end? Why, why, why…?

 

The line between dreams and reality gradually blurred until Remus found himself in his own bed, thrashing silently to and fro, sweating and struggling against imagined demons.

“A dream!” he told himself firmly, grabbing his pillow and hugging it to his chest to keep himself from shaking “It was only a dream!” His hand involuntarily grabbed at his shoulder, the immense jagged scar that cut across the skin one of many testaments to the fact that it had not been just a dream. He could still feel the man’s hot breath on his face. Greyback. His name was Fenrir Greyback. His father had told him the tale, when he was recovered enough to hear it. And Remus had also been told, to his horror, for he had been desperately praying that it wasn’t so, that it was his father’s fault that he had been attacked.

“I didn’t know!” he’d insisted to his son “When I said it! I didn’t know…”

“That’s hardly an excuse!” Hope had turned on him from the other side of the room, where she’d been standing with her arms folded tightly, her face tear-stained. “Deserving of nothing but death? What were you thinking?” Remus had looked at his father’s face and seen exhaustion and self-loathing. He’d seen sorrow and he’d seen regret. He saw a shadow of the man he’d once known as his father, pale and dark-eyed and exhausted. But when Lyall leaned forward to give Remus a hug, he leaned away.

“Am I a monster now?” he asked, shaking “Do I have to die?”

“No, my Remmy! No!” Lyall made another attempt to cup Remus’s cheek in his warm palm.

“I’m tired,” he pled with his mother, averting his eyes from his father’s gaze “I need to go to sleep.” He had not been able to look at his father for weeks.


End file.
